Minister of Sport, Anil Roberts, continues to receive praise for the work he is doing with the nation's athletes.
The latest to join the chorus is golfer Ben Martin who is currently making a bid to play professionally in England.
A four-time national champion and the youngest player to ever represent T & T, Martin noted that the assistance he received from Roberts and Sportt has been critical in his success so far.
"Being a Trinidadian, it gives me great pride to represent the red, white and black on a world stage. I am a sporting ambassador and thanks to the help and support of Minister Roberts and his team, achieving my lifetime dream becomes more of a reality. "
Martin who broke the record for the lowest score of 64 in the Caribbean Championships, and is now a touring golf professional said: "It gives me a huge sense of pride when my name is announced on the first tee at the beginning of a tournament, may it be in Europe, Africa, or the US.
Golf is an individual sport and therefore I have a lot of alone time, travelling and competing all over the world. This gives me an opportunity to reflect on what I want to achieve and how I can help to grow the game of golf. In future years I would like to see more professional golfers following in the footsteps of Stephen Ames and myself. "Minister Roberts has tremendous knowledge of all aspect of sport and what it takes to be great. His excellent understanding of both the mental and physical commitment that is required has helped many before me and I am certain many after me! He deals with team sports as well as individual sports and personally I don't think there is a better person to be in charge of our local sporting men and women.
"Minister Roberts has given me the honorable opportunity to train and use the elite athlete unit and gym with world class psychologists and trainers. This enables me to come home during the winter months to get away from the cold, get some sun and salt, and have the use of world class facilities to give me the kick start I need for the upcoming season. I can't ignore the fact that I also get to feast on all our lovely local foods roti and shark and bake being two of my favourites." For the upcoming 2014 season Martin will be playing a combination of events on three different tours. The Jamega Tour, The Players Tour and the Europro Tour. These tournaments are all well ranked and have approximately 150 golfers in each event from across the globe. This will also help to prepare him for the European tour qualifying school tournaments in September. There are three stages to go through to make it onto the European Tour.
Previously, in 2012, Martin advanced through to the second stage but narrowly missed out on the third stage, which would have given him playing rights onto the biggest, most travelled tour in the world, known as the European Tour.
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